Hear No Sense, See No Sense, Speak Absolute Nonsense

Egypt just keeps coming at me. I took a vow of silence more than a year ago and it just wouldn’t let me enjoy it. Everything that had been going on had been way too much for me to take so I decided to shut down and stop following the news or listening to idiots talk. Yet somehow this country manages to creep its treats under my doorstep and surprise me just when I think I can’t be more surprised.

The possibility of change three years ago played on all of our emotions; we were ecstatic despite our shocks. We knew that we lived under injustice and everything colorful a sixty year old dictatorship could fashion, but we hadn’t seen ugliness and looked it in the eye until we saw cars and tanks driving over hundreds of protesters and crushing them like they were grass, or anti-protest officers dressed in civilian clothing dragging bodies and dumping them in the trash. This only fueled us more to go further into the streets and bring this aging dictator down. Everything he had built around himself to keep money flowing into his pockets and servants lining to bow before him had to be dismantled. We weren’t naive, we just went by the book and thought our numbers would suffice. We didn’t realize that this web of trust and support he had built around himself was the very pillars upon which the entire system stood, and that it was so rooted into the fabric of the country that, with one metaphoric press of a button, those numbers that marched hand in hand to bring him down could turn on each other, become life enemies and start calling each other names.

People got shot dead in the streets, there are videos that show police snipers shooting live bullets from rooftops of the ministry of interior. Thousands got shot in the head and in the chest for the world to see. The shooters were identifiable, by name and face, but none of them got convicted. But that’s not it. It’s the freak show that keeps topping itself with more freakish things. It’s that freak show’s ability to shock you by making your worst case scenario expectations – those farcical things you say out of doom that don’t make all that much sense – a reality.

What would have been a farce if said three years ago when we saw all that blood and saw the faces of those involved in it? That the culprits would be cleared of the charges and claimed innocent? That just happened. Mubarak and the head of the police at the time when all the killing happened have just received their innocence in court, and there are people cheering and singing and dancing in the street as I write this.

So you don’t have to go to great lengths to imagine how that freak show operates. It’s ridiculously simple. Think of a single woman TV anchor that shoots down the protesters with her words, calling them agents and traitors and shedding tears in front of the camera in sympathy for Mubarak, whom she calls a “father” for all Egyptians, and then the minute he steps down she hails the revolution and the patriots that brought an end to an era of injustice and tyranny. Watch her and a thousand others switch back and forth shamelessly like it was the most normal thing in the world.

Think of a row of women singing and chanting for Mubarak and saying that those 18 year olds deserved to be killed because they didn’t know how to respect the state. The state. Listen to their bizarre definitions of what a state means. Now visualize them wearing scarves on their heads; that Islamic head covering that is supposed to be a symbol of religiosity, kindness, modesty and in their view a submission to the higher will of God.

Think of major newspapers flaunting live ammunition preparations to combat foreseen protests expected to take place.

Think of famous columnists writing words of hatred, bigotry, xenophobia and occasional racism calling ordinary people to take up arms against each other, or to report their neighbors to the state if they suspect anything “unusual.” Now think of them hosted on TV as informative political analysts (by said TV anchor and the likes, of course) and continuing to write and publish in major outlets with no legal action taken against them. In fact, with not so much as a raised eyebrow from readers who proudly post those articles on their social network profiles.

Think of a man in a military uniform declaring that he has come up with an earth shattering invention that is able to remotely diagnose and cure a patient with AIDS or liver disease. Watch men dressed in white coats pointing a wireless device at a man walking back and forth and waiting for the device to signal which disease the man has. Now watch, again, said TV anchor host an “expert” who, after a fraction of a second’s hesitation, confirms that the device can detect and cure cancer as well.

Watch tyranny reap the harvest of decades of planned ignorance, poverty and disease that ate up millions. Watch it sit back and relax and wait for those millions to come back to it on their knees, crawling and asking for forgiveness of all their sins, for they have once dared believe that someone else might lift them out of their misery, not knowing that their subhuman lives were the best the state could offer. It was after all their own fault; they are too many. When counting how much the state needs to spend for them and for the hand tailored suits of the president that have his name threaded on the fabric with the finest touch from Italy, it simply can’t afford it. It’s doing the best it can to keep everyone happy. The president with his suits and the millions with the best lives they have ever known.

You figure out the rest of the freak show. Let your mind wander freely and see what absurdities it can come up with and you’ve got it, topped with worse and even more.